Our young team of ant watchers wanted to know more about the ants in the playground. So we decided to investigate and study ants.

When we talked about it as a group everybody seemed to know something about ants but nobody was quite sure what they liked to eat.

To find out we planned an experiment. We put out five paper plates, one with strawberry jam, another with honey, grass, orange juice, and carrots and put them outside near the ants. Over two hours we used our scientific and mathematical skills to observe and tally the number of ants on each plate, and record the results. In the end we found that honey attracted the most ants, closely followed by orange juice.

Using bug catchers, we caught ants and looked at them through a magnifying glass. We all painted pictures of ants, and then we drew a big ant on easel paper and labelled it’s parts –

• compound eye
• thorax
• legs
• head
• antenna and..
• abdomen

We also read books about ants, and we sang The Ants Go Marching – everyone had fun making up actions!

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